E-bikes are a Transportation Revolution

I bought an e-bike in November 2020, it was life-changing, and now I have 4 (pedal-assist, not throttle). I'm documenting my reflections about the e-bike space here, in the hope it will help others.

4 e-bikes on the Hoboken waterfront

Index

• Background: bike-sharer → bike-owner → e-bike maniac

• My e-bikes

  • Overview/Specs: weights between 35-60lbs, ranges from 25-130mi, prices from $1900-$7000 ($2500-$8000 incl. gear)

  • VanMoof X3: great all-around / starter / city e-bike

  • Brompton Electric: smallest fold, most portable, great all around

  • Tern Vektron Q9: large cargo capacity, folds up for easy storage

  • Specialized Creo Comp Carbon: light, fast, long-range

• Reflections

  • Speed ⟹ Safety: higher top speed – and acceleration – make a big difference in traffic

  • Speed ⟹ Inclusion: a lot more people can get around quickly+comfortably on ebikes

  • Speed ⟹ Convenience: ebikes are as fast as cars in urban environments; can solve congestion and parking issues

  • Space: high mobility per unit space; combine with other modes (trains, buses, ferries)

    • Bike vs. Car Storage: parking takes too much space in cities, and is heavily subsidized; bike parking is 5-10x more efficient

  • Cost: the average car cost could fund e-bikes for 10 families

  • Cargo:

    • Groceries, Bulk Items: basically any grocery run, and a surprising number of bulk item moves, can be done via e-bike

    • Kids: easy to carry 1 or 2 kids by e-bike

    • PoV: Grocery Runs: I get groceries by e-bike and it's great

    • PoV: Moving House: I moved across town – with 2wks of stuff – by ebike

  • Health

  • Fun

  • Car sewers: cars make streets miserable for everyone not in a car; doing this to 100% of streets is extreme, and terrible policy.

• Getting Started

  • Bike Shares: easy way to get used to city biking/scooting (if unfamiliar)

  • Renting: rent a few types of bikes before buying one

  • Safety

    • Stats

    • Speed

    • Fear

    • Riding on Sidewalks

    • Stopping at Stop Signs / Red Lights

    • Braking: Sheldon Brown on front brakes

    • Helmets: can't hurt, but often used to blame/criminalize cyclists for infrastructure/engineering problems

    • Lights: the more the better

    • Hi-Viz Clothing: similar to helmets; good practice, but often discussed unfairly

  • Route Planning: Street View, Ride with GPS, Strava all useful

  • Traveling with E-bikes: flying generally not possible (might work with e-brompton); trains/boats generally easy/possible

  • Starter Packs

    • VanMoof X3 + Gear: $83/mo (incl. maintenance/theft/insurance coverage), $3k outright

    • RadPower: popular under $2k

  • Reading

    • ElectricBikeReview.com

    • r/ebikes

• Gear: 10-20% a bike's cost in add-ons can make it 10x more useful

  • Helmets: I use a Lumos "Kickstart" helmet with lights built in

  • Racks, Baskets: starting point for carrying bags' worth of stuff on rides

  • Bags: get weight off of you and onto the bike, where it rolls

    • Panniers: bags that hang from sides of back rack; can be quite large, very useful

    • Cockpit Bags: smaller bags up around your handlebars for essentials

    • Frame Bags: small/medium bags attached to the frame

    • Back-Rack / Seat Bags: medium bags on top of back rack or behind+underneath seat

  • Phone Mounts: phone mounted up front (e.g. w/ turn-by-turn directions) is surprisingly useful; I use Quad Lock.

  • Lights: front, rear, party, Vont 'Pyro' (set), KNOG (set)

  • Locks: Kryptonite U-lock + cable (medium weight, decent security), OnGuard U-Lock (lighter / more clearance but weaker), OTTO cable lock (compact+light extra security layer)

  • Misc. Accessories: bell, rear-view mirrors (1 2), kickstand, hand pump

  • Gloves: padded gloves, light but warm winter gloves

  • Rain Gear: Clever Hoods are popular + good

  • Winter Cycling: easier+better than you think, $200 of gear solves cold down to ≈25ºF

    • Heated Gloves: my main pair, another good pair, and one that actually makes a women's size

    • Heated Vests

    • Pogies

    • Heated Socks

    • Hand Warmers

  • Action Cameras: I use a GoPro Hero 9 Black and GoPro Hero 8 Black, in a chest harness and seat-rail mount, to film rides

  • Padded Shorts: good all-around active shorts w/ pockets

• Documenting Rides

  • Ride-tracking apps:

    • Strava: robust recording app (resumes after phone crashes), good small-circle social network, good open data posture

    • RideWithGPS: similar to Strava, emphasis on route planning/sharing, UX is clunkier

    • wandrer.earth: cool app on top of Strava, providing stats/viz about places you've been and places you might still like to explore

  • Post-Processing Videos: dealing with videos afterward is its own adventure

    • GoPros are pretty hard to deal with; telemetry data is often not recorded correctly, and the GoPro software ecosystem is a mess

    • External SSDs: 1TB/2TB Samsungs, palm-sized

    • 512GB micro-SD: never worry about SD-card capacity in-camera (there's enough to worry about when the data comes off the camera)

    • Wasabi Cloud Storage: cheap+easy cloud storage; good option for archival video storage

    • VFX Suites: unfortunately necessary to do anything with action-camera videos

    • YouTube: I've posted some ride videos to Neighbor Ryan on YouTube